Tag: music

Prof. Whitney Goes to Austin

What a day of wonder. I’m in Austin, TX, Texas being my homeland and site of a whole lot of memories of all colors and temperatures.

Today I tagged along with a coalition of survivors of child sexual abuse representing several different advocacy organizations as well as themselves. We were there to educate legislators and their staff about SOL reform bills making their way through votes that would either help or further hinder folks like me to get any kind of justice AND to expose the abusers and the organizations in which they hide.

And lots of press! These today and more tomorrow. Whew!

(And Austin and music and tacos and bats and true love. A long, deep, great day.)

Here you go! Will edit/ update later on, so please forgive these messy and unhidden links-

Here’s what should be a free link to Houston Chronicle article: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/texas-capitol-survivors-child-sexual-abuse-17854764.php?utm_source=marketing&utm_medium=copy-url-link&utm_campaign=article-share&hash=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuaG91c3RvbmNocm9uaWNsZS5jb20vcG9saXRpY3MvdGV4YXMvYXJ0aWNsZS90ZXhhcy1jYXBpdG9sLXN1cnZpdm9ycy1jaGlsZC1zZXh1YWwtYWJ1c2UtMTc4NTQ3NjQucGhw&time=MTY3OTU0MzU1MzY1OQ==&rid=YzkxZGQzM2ItYjY4OC00NzIwLTg4ZDItNjFjN2VkZjFkOWZh&sharecount=Mg==

And also CBS Austin https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/sexual-abuse-survivors-advocate-outside-texas-capitol-for-statute-of-limitations-reform

And also Fox 4 in DFW https://www.fox7austin.com/news/survivors-protest-texas-bill-child-sex-abuse-statute-limitations-austin-capitol

And Fox 7 Austin https://www.fox7austin.com/news/survivors-protest-texas-bill-child-sex-abuse-statute-limitations-austin-capitol

Fairest, Beautiful

The first hymn I ever loved was “Fairest Lord Jesus,” in our hymnal as “Beautiful Savior” (ELW 838).

Having not been raised in the church, then coming home from summer camp wanting to find out everything I could about God, I listened to the Christian radio station in Houston. Mixed in there with a lot of very bad theology and political discourse was a lot of great 1980s “Contemporary Christian” music—some of it terrific, some truly awful—covering the whole range of 80s sounds from synthesizers, to fake rock and roll, to the truly grandiose. One day, cutting through all that noise like a laser, I heard this simple hymn. It was performed a capella, without instruments, starting with a single voice and then layering on part after part in a way that made my ears tingle. It was like musical glitter, sparkling and lovely.

I knew about Jesus the baby, Jesus the mighty, Jesus the mysterious, Jesus the dead-then-alive. To that point, my attraction to Jesus had been to the idea of Jesus.  It was about his teachings, his importance, the necessity of Jesus.

keplers_supernovaBut THIS was a different Jesus. Jesus the beautiful. Jesus in the meadows and woodlands; Jesus in a shining sky.  Beautiful Jesus. The Fairest.  The song, and the Jesus in the song, cut right through my brain, through all that thinking and reasoning I had been doing, and got into my musical heart. Thinking about Jesus was good, but through this song I started to feel Jesus.

Beautiful Savior, delight us with your starlight and moonlight. Shine on the meadows and woodlands, and on us.  Drizzle your beauty all over us like musical glitter. Let your love enter our brains, our ears and our hearts. Amen.

Photo by NASA/ESA/JHU/R.Sankrit & W.Blair [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons